Monday, December 28

I am nearing last straw territory with these guys. As you may or may not already know, Verizon has entered into a deal with Microsoft to use Bing as the search provider. That's year old news at this point. Well, that deal came to fruition recently for Blackberry owners as the Bing mobile search application was pushed out to BB users in the last week or so. If you don't see it yet, do a reset on your phone and it should pop up.

Back when the deal actually was news, I called Verizon and notified them that if Bing was the choice I didn't want their service anymore. The support representative I talked to assured me that I would continue to be able to use Google just as I always have, but that Bing would be their preferred search provider. That information was not accurate. I can no longer use Google as I always have... because the search application was removed during the push.

That's right. I didn't get another competing option with this deal. What I got was clobbered. It's one thing to push an app I don't want to my phone. It's quite another thing to remove an app I already have and use regularly. That is what really ticks me off and what has me ready to cancel my Verizon service again.

If you have the same issue, you can get Google back. You simply have to download it again and re-install. The point is, I shouldn't have to use the data and I shouldn't have to deal with this. If you don't like it either, I suggest flooding the customer service lines at Verizon and lodging complaints. You can either do that or leave the service, which I would have done long ago if their coverage wasn't so good. Coverage or not, this whole annoyance coupled with the Nexus One around the corner makes me more and more likely to go find a GSM provider.